Sound Design with Charlatan VSTi

The Charlatan VSTi synth is top quality, and totally free. In this tutorial I'll show you how to make bass, lead, pad and rhythmic noise sounds with it. We'll also create a basic sampled kick, and create a pumping effect on the bass and kick using sidechain compression.

Ableton Live project view

Charlatan first appeared in 2011. It has two virtual analogue oscillators, and comes in both 32- and 64-bit versions for Windows. This instrument is coded in C++ and is very CPU efficient. You can download at www.blaukraut.info.

Charlatan VST instrument

Prepare the Ableton Live Project

The song is at 130 BPM, and uses the usual 4/4 rhythm. Put a Spectrum, an EQ Eight and a Limiter on the master channel, using the default settings.

Every sound comes from custom programmed and recorded MIDI clips. Use MIDI quantize.

Basic settings for the project

This is our master chain.

Master chain

Create the Patches

1. Kick

The kick is a simple looped and programmed MIDI clip, and the hits are on the downbeat. Load a kick sample into Simpler, and then an EQ Eight with a 4x times low cut at 50 Hz. Change the volume to 0 dB. It should sound like this:

A sampled kick is loaded into Simpler

The EQ should look like this:

Kick EQ

2. Bass

This is a basic electro house style bass sound with a rhythm used commonly in trance. It sounds like this:

5. Rhythmic Noise

Small, high-pass-filtered noise hits (auto panned) are used to create a wider mix:

Noise synth patch

Synth settings:

OSC1: volume 0%,

OSC2: volume 0%,

Noise: shape 70%, volume 55%—this is the most important step for the sound

Envelopes: default

Filters: default

Noise EQ

Mixer settings:

Simple Delay 1: synced to /4 and /6 feedback 66%, dry-wet 25%

Simple Delay 2: synced to /4 and /6 feedback 29%, dry-wet 25%

Reverb: decay 1.68sec, dry-wet 29%, size 100

EQ Eight: low cut at 660Hz, +5dB high shelf boost at 5kHz

Add Effects

Creative Effects

Use some reverb and delay to add a sense of depth for the lead, pad and noise sounds. For the reverbs I generally use the Eco setting in low quality mode, because it tends to give a more natural feel.

Eco setting for Reverb

EQ

Use subtractive EQ to make space for the masking frequencies (except for the noise, where it's okay to boost some frequencies). If your ears are untrained, it's a good strategy to first boost the wanted part, then invert it into the negative domain (first boost, after cut).

Big EQ picture

Conclusion

Synths photo by boboroshi / flickr

In this article we have learned about making synth sounds with Charlatan, and using both creative effects and mixing effects.

For further learning, check out the preset banks at the BlauKraut Engineering website, or at the KVR database. I recommend trying out deconstructing and modifying the presets.